Continuing The Story
by Penningpastiche
Summary: Follows Sam after his return to Bag End after Frodo's departure, and chronicles his struggles to overcome his grief and continue the legacy Frodo left behind.


It had been three years since Sam Gamgee became the sole owner of Bag End. Nothing had changed, but everything was different. The Shire was green again, but the damage done by Saruman still lingered in people's minds. Bag End had been restored to its former Third Age glory, everything Sam remembered and nothing. The rotund halls were no longer quiet; the sound of Mr. Bilbo's pen scratching was gone and was replaced by the sound of children's pattering feet. Sometimes Sam would scrawl aimlessly on his papers, just to hear the familiar sound again.

_Don't you lose him, Sam Gamgee. Don't you dare lose him._

When he first returned to Bag End, he thought he was going to suffocate from all of the memories flooding him from every direction. The sound the front door made when it opened, the odd popping sounds the stove sometimes made, the smell of the breeze coming through Mr. Bilbo's study window. His study. _My study..._ Sam kept having to remind himself that it belonged to him now. It took him six months to fully stop being incapacitated by his loss, and do more than just sit, consumed by the memories.

The hardest part, one that became a recurring wound, was when Frodo would still receive mail at Bag End. At first, Rosie tried to hide them, but while making himself some food one afternoon Sam found them, wedged behind the flour crock. There were six of them, of various sizes and on various kinds of paper.

TO MR. FRODO BAGGINS.

TO MR. FRODO BAGGINS OF BAG END

FRODO BAGGINS  
BAG END  
THE SHIRE

Sam felt heat on his face and realized he was standing in front of the stove, ready to throw the letters and all the memories they contained into the flames. But he couldn't do it. Something stayed his hand, his fingers tightening around and crinkling the paper.

"Sam?" he heard from behind him. He turned to see Rosie standing in the doorway. She spotted the letters in his hands, and her face became mournful. "Oh Sam…I'm sorry, I just didn't know what to do…" She tried to take them from him, but he moved them away from her reaching hands.

"I…no. It's okay. I want to keep them."

"Sam, are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

He stuck them in a cabinet in the study. More mail came for Frodo after that, though with increasing rarity. Sam stuck them all in the cabinet. He never looked at them, but sometimes it was comforting to know they were there.

He still remembered the taste of lembas, a taste he had once thought he would be glad to forget.

He still remembered Frodo's and Bilbo's birthday, as well as the day that they had sailed for Valinor, and left him behind.

Frodo had entrusted the Red Book to him, told him to keep the chronicles going, but for a very long time he found himself incapable of opening it. He wanted to, but he couldn't. But he found himself recording nearly everything anyway, using whatever scrap paper he could find. Rosie began keeping a supply of paper on hand just for him, for this purpose, and never moved the Red Book from its place on the bookshelf where it would wait for the day Sam was ready to begin. She didn't ask why, but Sam had a feeling she understood.

After the initial shock of loss, and the attempt at recovery, Sam began to have nightmares.

_He's back on Weathertop again, the moon cold and the stars arching over him like menacing, glittering eyes. His bones are still, stiff, and his every nerve sings with fear as he sees the nine black shapes advancing towards where Frodo lay prostrate on the ground, a few feet away from where Sam stood. He hears a scream that he recognizes as Frodo's, an agonizing, shrieking scream._

He woke gasping, the images of a red eye, flashes of gold, and the black of a Nazgûl's hood filling his mind. Rosie comforted him in the dark, taught him how to breathe again, but nothing eased the pain.

Cold, gleaming eyes in the dark, long knobby fingers prodding for the chain around Frodo's throat. The image—one he was sure would never leave him—of his Master's body becoming more and more ravaged by the Ring, the animalistic rages that seemed to come out of nowhere. He had known before they even left the Shire that Frodo was in danger and not just from the wraiths that haunted their every step, but it ended up being far worse than he could have fathomed. Even three years after it was over, it still haunted him.

He still trimmed the bushes and tended the gardens, but was rarely able to get through the task without being overwhelmed with the sensation of being hauled through the open window by an angry Gandalf.

Sometimes, if he felt up for it, he would tell his children a story about their valiant Uncle Frodo, and his quest to destroy the Ring. It soon became one of their favorites, but it took longer for his pain to subside enough for the words to come easily. His son Frodo especially loved the stories, and though he was barely old enough to keep himself upright he soon took to running around with a stick fashioned into a toy sword and yelling "I wiwl take ve wing to Mordwor!" He became puzzled when his father would suddenly go quiet, and turn away.

Every day since returning, Sam sat down at his desk and tried to write. He wanted to, he really did. But the memories would flood him, and it would be too painful to even go near the Red Book, and he would eagerly accept any distraction that came his way. A passing neighbor, his children, sneaking into the kitchen to have a snack when Rosie wasn't looking. The days piled up, and his scrap-paper chronicles grew. Some days he would catch himself looking at the Red Book, at the leather cover and the designs drawn on it, and it would cross his mind that maybe this time he could pick it up. But then he would reach for it, and the action would be too painful, and he would withdraw his hand.

Sometimes during thunderstorms he would hear the wind and rain whistling around the house, and he would be reminded of Gollum's hissing laugh and speech. He would sit awake for a long time, unable to sleep for all the hissing.

After many months, the periods in which Sam wrote, chronicling everyday events, became longer, and the records more in-depth. He found himself referencing the events of the War of the Ring, vaguely at first and then more obviously. He began to wonder what it would be like to follow in Bilbo and Frodo's footsteps and record everything.

The nightmares began to disappear. Sam found himself both glad and oddly mournful. He may have woken up in a nervous sweat, panting and unable to sleep again, but they provided him with some of the few images he had left of Frodo. He didn't want to lose those.

Soon everything was becoming easier. Sam felt at home in Bag End, he felt like he truly owned it. He never forgot Bilbo, or Frodo, never became arrogant in his possession. But something had switched.

One day, while sitting at his desk in the study not doing anything particularly enthralling, Sam found his gaze turning, for the fifth time that day, towards the Red Book where it sat on its shelf, collecting a sense of permanence.

Slowly, cautiously, Sam reached for it. Gently, he pulled it off the shelf and cleared off his desk, placing the leather-bound tome on the empty surface.

The leather creaked slightly as he opened it, the pages slightly yellowed in places. Bilbo's scrawly, loose handwriting filled the first half, telling the story of Erebor, and then it was replaced by Frodo's more cramped hand, his smaller and neater lettering. Tears misted the corners of Sam's eyes at the sight of his master's writing. He sat down in his chair, never taking his eyes off the book, and then uncapped his inkwell. He dipped his pen in the thick black liquid, and placed it on the first blank page. The nib scratched across the paper, making the sound that had been so familiar in the days when the Baggins had still lived in Bag End.

_ Here begins the narrative of Samwise Gamgee, servant and friend of Master Frodo Baggins…_


End file.
